I missed a word there: pirate 'quality' games. They tried to release 'HK original' quality games for their system.
So are all games for the A'can just ports from PC games? How many games are available for PC? And where can we get them :dance:
... Both. Looks can be deceiving. The A'can version only has "battle mode", meaning all characters and bosses are playable from the start. Sango Fighter for PC has an additional "story mode", where only the five main heroes are selectable; the A'can version dumped this feature. So, instead of any kind of decent ending, all you can hope for is to see your character laughing in front of the crowd, and then it's game over. It's the same exact MIDI files, but they sound different because the PC version uses AdLib for output whilst the A'can version uses the A'can's sound processor... which isn't AdLib. True. However, many character attack noises and death sounds are in the wrong places or played at the wrong times. Also, they mixed in voices from both Sango Fighter and Sango Fighter 2, which is confusing since the characters will sound very different between attacks. The decent hit / fall / big hit sound effects from the original games were also replaced with watered-down versions, for completely unknown reasons. D'oh. No. But some backgrounds and sprites from Sango Fighter 2 were used in the Sango Fighter port to the A'can, which makes little sense because to put the upgraded graphics in with the 2-years-older ones is nothing but confusing. Either use them all, or use none of them. In my opinion, Sango Fighter 2 could have been handled by the A'can, and would've made more sense to port over, instead of a badly rushed port of the original. Though I guess it doesn't matter, because the original author of Sango Fighter didn't even work on the A'can port in the first place. The only Panda game to be released in English was the original Sango Fighter, and it wasn't an official release. Rather, the devious company Accend (whom you may recall also ripped off the BUILD engine from 3d Realms) did the translation and marketed it in the USA. I got this information directly from a former Panda employee. A lawsuit by C&E (makers of Super Fighter) had kept Panda from releasing Sango Fighter outside of Taiwan. Not all, some. And anyway, the A'can versions were usually slightly to heavily modified from their PC counterparts (usually, downgraded).
Heh, talk about lazy! Why include a big dramatic story (the intro) about the 5 tigers going about to unify china, if there isn't really a story mode to begin with!? And if battle mode is all you get, then it doesn’t make sense (according to the intro) to be playing with anyone other than Liu Bei or his generals. Why the heck they decided used SF2 sprites and backgrounds is beyond me. Unless they were crunched for time, they might as well just release SF2 in full. But then again, I suppose the A’Can wouldn’t be able to handle the graphic resolution of SF2’s strategy and planning sections. That is, unless they increase the font size and redo the map of China, as well as locations to fit the screen. Anyway, I’m so glad someone else likes Panda Software as much as I do! If someone manages to get sprite rips and sounds, perhaps I’ll make a GBA conversion of the game or something. Hopefully it will be better than the A’can version
Someone should emulate the A'Can. The MESS code probably has most of the chips already emulated. And, rarely do chinese companies use custom chips; they are usually clones of well known chips.
That video almost makes me want to run out and buy an A'can for Sango Fighter. But if I wasn't already a San Guo Yan Yi fan, I probably wouldn't give it a second thought. Too bad the Console and game is somewhat difficult to find. One day I hope someone does an 'assets' rip from the game so people (like me) can do a proper conversion or something.
If Dr Slump gets those shots of the board maybe this will be a possibility soon Though I still wonder how any dumps of anything are going to be released seeing as it's apparently looked down on by a certain someone here :noooo:
Oh....I thought that's what was mainly needed to identify the chips so people could figure out which things needed to be emulated.
In what may be seen as a poor attempt to revive this dead thread... (Trivia warning!) Do you know the last system that Sango Fighter was released on? This might suprise you... or maybe not.
There's (at least) one Acan cart dumped - Bomb Bomb Zoo. The rom image is floating around since ~2002 iirc. It's direct dump of the mask rom from cartridge - it's byteswapped 68k code/data rom with all vectors at the beginning (so i think console maps it at address 0 and boots ). Also system is (probably .. see below) emulated. Afaik it's private, not released to public emu. The author is well known from hoarding his stuff (mostly MESS emulator "drivers"), so i think it could be true. The rom image came with some small technical info about Acan internals and capabilities. I think ive lost the rom, but still have the info. It has alot of typos and mistakes (made by some .tw guy i think). http://pastebin.ca/665396
Thanks for the info, now to locate it! This does support the idea that the custom chips only handle bankswitching. The bankswitching could still be protected in some way.
How? The system could perform the bankswitching (well, multiple memory maps decoding the ROM in different ways) too...
I would think the cartridge would handle bankswitching, since the amount of memory on each cartridge would vary. If the system handled bankswitching, the cartridge port would have to have pins to address the maximum possible size of a cartridge (ie 24 address lines to address 16MB). A bankswitched cartridge could be done in 22 address lines. (21 address lines for 2 MB address space, similar to the Genesis, and an address line to select the bankswitching chip). And, if you look at the information posted earlier in the thread, the chips are connected to an address line.
But are the ROM's high address lines ONLY connected to the mystery chip? Is the mystery chip chip connected to the data bus?
One of the mystery chip pins goes to pin 22 on the ROM. This is VCC, which might work as a chip select? Connectors 20B, 21B, 23B and, 26B, from the cartridge connector, connect to the UM6550. It looks it pin 26B may enable the rom, which might override the internal BIOS(?), assuming it has one.
I've found bbz rom image, or rather found someone who still has the rom. I did some small research about the hardware, and reverse engineering. Memory map is unique. Doesn't look (so far) as anything ive seen before. Simple 68k core hookup gives some gfx to be copied to vram(?) , 256 color acan logo. Logo fades out. And that's all. A serie of something like DMA transfer starts. Conclusions: - it's unique hw .. so far (some ppl said it's based on PGM, but it's not) - haven't spotted any romnbanking yet. But i think i'm blind - gfx capabilities. The acan logo uses 8x8 8bpp tiles. - some kind of DMA exists. Maybe it decrypts/decompress data on fly (like on CPS3 for exmaple), but i doubt it ..
I thought maybe the A'Can logo was from a BIOS file or something, but it's on the cartridge. I think it does some mode 7 type effect on the logo, I'll have to drag out the A'Can to look at it again. None of the custom chips on the cartridge connect to data lines. The decrypt/decompress functionality would have to be internal to the A'Can. Does it look reasonable to create an emulator for the A'Can?
Then how could there be bankswitching? Only if the unknown pins carried bankswitching data which would be illogical.
Bank number is probably latched somewhere inside the A'can, so the rombanking chip (?) could be connected directly to the latch (thru cart pins). Another crazy idea - part of address lines used as data ones, for exampl e- writes (any) to range 0xf20000 - 0xf200ff are used to set rom bank number (0-ff). This method is used in a couple of arcade games. Btw. the screen i got:
